Bettye LaVette’s previous two albums had titles that required a little digging to unpack: I’ve Got My Own Hell To Raise took its name from a line in Fiona Apple’s “Sleep To Dream,” one of the 2005 disc’s fiery female-songwriter covers, and 2007’s The Scene of the Crime referred to LaVette’s return to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where she cut an early-’70s album that remained unreleased for more than 30 years.

This new one, on the other hand, lets you know exactly what you’re in for, as LaVette turns in Southern-soul renditions of tunes by such UK institutions as Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin. Yet if the title is straightforward, the music often isn’t, with LaVette teasing out new emotional details from songs that seemed to have given up all their secrets decades ago. (Who knew “Maybe I’m Amazed” had any amazement left in it?)

Yes, things can get a little Mojo-reader dreary, as in “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” which offers neither the Animals’ energy nor Nina Simone’s fury. But LaVette’s take on the Stones’ “Salt of the Earth” is a master class in creative compassion.

In an iPod world, Broadway goes vinyl Dave Lifrieri, owner of Analog Underground on Broadway, was in the eighth grade listening to Beatles and Led Zeppelin on vinyl when the CD player — and the inevitable avalanche of remasters — made their full arrival.

Review: The Elephant In the Living Room There are more tigers in Texas than in India, according to Michael Webber's award-wining documentary, The Elephant In the Living Room , which plays next weekend at Movies at the Museum at the Portland Museum of Art.

Arborea sail across a fossil sea When critics say a band have a timelessness about them, people generally mean the band's music is sort of universally appealing, outside of trends or genres.

Oh, the Humanities The data contained within the following illustration represents the most common words found in the titles of more than 150 doctoral theses in the humanities and social sciences published in 2010.

Review: Zookeeper Local viewers might be amused by director Frank Coraci's Boston geography in this slapdash comedy; for example, taking a right turn on Queensberry onto Storrow Drive and then over the Zakim Bridge en route to the airport. Makes as much sense as the plot, I suppose.

DEVO | SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY | July 01, 2010 Given the theory of de-evolution these Ohio brainiacs began expounding more than 30 years ago, it makes a sad kind of sense that Devo's first album since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps offers such a charmless, base-level version of the band's synth-addled new wave.